


what can be said of my heart?

by attonitos_gloria



Series: when it was over, and we could talk about it, [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Draw Me Like One of Your French Girls, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Painting, Slow? Burn, Sufjan Stevens references, book!canon, domestic life, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:33:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23330947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attonitos_gloria/pseuds/attonitos_gloria
Summary: Sansa offers him an apologetic smile; looks at the canvas; dives the brush in red ink, and then yellow, blending the colors. “I have a question.”“Please,” he says with a vague wave of his hand, drinks again.Sansa falls back on her seat, retreating a couple of inches, and tilts her head as she examines the canvas again. “Why don’t we move to Casterly Rock?”[A lost Stark is found and brought back to her husband in King's Landing.]
Relationships: Tyrion Lannister & Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister/Sansa Stark
Series: when it was over, and we could talk about it, [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677799
Comments: 26
Kudos: 154





	what can be said of my heart?

**Author's Note:**

> can be read as a stand-alone or as prequel to _it's not a miracle we needed_. either way, just like its companion piece, this is fluffier than book!canon has any right to be. one day I'll write something that makes canonical sense for these two. but not today. and the tags? absolutely serious. go with it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

 _They’ve found your wife in the Eyrie, Imp_ , is what they tell him; the second one, Tyrion assumes, the one who would matter in a vicious town like King’s Landing.

There are those who still call him Imp behind Daenerys’ back. She is angry about it, but the Queen’s advisor laughs; says she is too young. She glares at him with her purple, dragon eyes, behind the rim of her cup. _Don’t pretend you don’t care; not to me._

Anyway, said Queen certainly would be thrilled to know that they’ve got a legitimate Stark with them in King’s Landing, and not anywhere near the North, where Stannis Baratheon still lives and is acclaimed as King, specially with the Bolton bastard missing, nowhere to be found after the Battle for Winterfell. So Tyrion is called to meet the girl, but not to be given his northerner bride back: Daenerys has planned to marry her to Aegon, and Tyrion hadn’t exactly thought the worst of it. He hadn’t thought the best, either.

He is called, of course, as the only person in this new King’s Landing who can attest to the truth of the girl’s statement. Because since the Targaryens came back to Westeros, legitimate Starks, Baratheons and Lannisters are popping out of nowhere, like mushrooms after spring rain. _She’s got black hair,_ the guard tells him, and Tyrion muses about it on their way to the room where the candidate waits. He thinks a pretender would be minimally informed about this basic, obvious feature of his little wife. Or they could have just claimed to be Arya Stark, who is, by the way, missing as well.

So he opens the door after three knocks, and behind it, he finds a girl with black hair.

A woman. It’s a grown woman, though still very young, and she stops pacing around when her eyes find his; so unmistakably blue, he thinks, vivid and hot and scared. The hair is, indeed, black: falling in lifeless waves to her waist. Her clothes are simple, the kind he would expect to see on a bastard or a servant, not the oldest daughter of Ned Stark and key of the North. She’s tall. For a long moment, they just stare at each other in shocked silence.

Then, the woman’s face falls and she says his name in a whispered breath. “Tyrion.”

And then -- _then_ , the strangest thing happens: the woman walks toward him in rushed strides with her very long legs, falls to her knees before him, wraps her arms around him and mumbles, relief flooding every word, “thank the gods. I thought you were dead.”

Tyrion Lannister, known to all as the Queen’s favorite candidate to the post of Hand, the man who won the West to her cause, who took down her enemies for her, who’s helped her to find her long lost kin, who’s gave her the Seven Kingdoms when he turned against his own family, the man with the sharpest tongue in Westeros, is speechless in the embrace of this strange creature holding him, because that certainly can’t be Sansa Stark, the scared girl who left him to die in Cersei’s hands; that can’t be Sansa Stark, the pretty girl who inherited the colouring from her mother, who was always dressed in her nicest dress even while Joffrey beat her; that can’t be Sansa Stark, because the true Sansa hated him, and for the first seconds he can’t breathe, he can’t wrap his arms around her as well - his short, stunted ones remain fallen against his sides - and he can’t form one single coherent thought.

And the reason he can’t think is because - when she draws her face away from his shoulder, her winter eyes full of fear, the familiar sharpness of her cheek-bones, the sadness that lingers upon her face - he knows it is her, he’d recognized her from the first second he entered that room. He could never _not_ recognize her. For the Seven and against all odds, it’s Sansa.

“Sansa?” He murmurs, eyebrows frowning. Touches her cheek out of instinct, as if to make sure she’s not a ghost. “What happened to your hair?”

Sansa laughs, a choked out sound, and starts to cry. She hugs him again, and this time he returns the embrace. The first thing he thinks-

he’s never listened to her laughter before.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

Later, in a private meeting with Daenerys, Tyrion pours out wine for them both as she asks, “Did you talk to her about Aegon?”

He hands her a cup, uncomfortably shifting in his seat. “Well, yes-- about that, Your Grace,” he begins.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

Sansa asks to be accommodated in his chambers.

He’s used to be alone, since… Well, since he can remember anything in his life, and maybe he’s never felt more lonely as when they first got married, so it is odd to share a bed with someone again, with _her_ again. Cersei burnt the Tower of the Hand; it is in process of rebuilding, and Tyrion himself is supervisioning the work; he knows he will be offered that pin, sooner or later, though he hasn’t decided if he’ll take it. Either way, Tyrion’s rooms are located in Maegor's Holdfast, like everyone’s. As the maids bring her few clothes in, Sansa looks around, evaluating his chambers. Tyrion feels small. He hasn’t got rid of the gut-wrenching feeling that Sansa Stark is forever scrutinizing and examining everything about him and finding him ultimately faulting.

But the bedroom is tidy and clean and has a nice view of one of the dozen gardens of the Red Keep, though she won’t be able to see it clearly in a moonless night like this one, and at last, Sansa sits on the edge of the cushioned window bench and looks at him with soft eyes. She looks pale and thin and Tyrion thinks she needs a meal, immediately. He orders for one, the maids leave and then it’s just the two of them again.

“So,” Sansa says, and he’s startled by the sound of her voice. Apparently, he’ll have to get used to Sansa Stark _initiating conversations_. What a wild concept. “Did you speak to her?”

There’s a practicality to her voice. It’s a new, refreshing tone and it leaves his head whirling for a second. Tyrion looks at her, licks his own lips. “I did,” he says, and she waits. Tyrion struggles with the words. “She usually avoids forcing people into marriage, unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

She keeps waiting, until the silence is too much and she raises one eyebrow, cocking her head, and Tyrion is reminded that he felt shamefully attracted to her, even when she was a girl flowering into womanhood. Well, that hasn’t changed. If anything, now that she’s a woman- _shit_ , he thinks. “Very well, then, is it absolutely necessary for me to marry him?”

“Not really,” he explains. They are very distant from each other. It’s a safe distance. A good distance. “He is the Prince of Dragonstone and her heir, there are plenty of high-born ladies interested,” Tyrion shrugs. “He’s also very charming.”

He measures her reaction. Sansa has yet to see Aegon and he fears she’ll regret this decision. To be quite frank, her certainty about their doomed marriage left him somewhat disoriented. “I’ve heard,” it’s all she says.

Tyrion sighs. “My lady,” he starts, taking a step closer. “I know this city hasn’t been particularly kind to you, but Daenerys is not Cersei and you are safe here. Should this be the reason why-”

She rolls her eyes and looks at him utterly annoyed. “Stop talking to me as if I’m a child, Lord Tyrion,” she snaps.

He’s, again, speechless. That makes two. In one single day.

“Can I go home?” She asks, plain and simple and rather emotionless.

Tyrion swallows hard. “I’m sorry, my lady; not yet. The North is not safe now. The War is still not over above the Neck, the Bolton bastard might be still alive and looking for a Stark bride, as far as we know,” he says, carefully. “And there are several strange reports from the Wall, a topic to be evaluated. So I’d advise you against it. Strongly.”

Her face doesn’t change. “Then I’d rather stay here.”

 _Here_ , he understands, in this chamber, _here_ , with you, as if he were a place.

So she stays. Before he falls asleep, it occurs to Tyrion that she never answered what happened to her hair.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

They break fast together, and when he retires to their chambers at night, she greets him with a gentle smile. They don’t talk much, but she seems comfortable enough, both with the silence and with his presence. She sews, or reads, or plays the high-harp. When she does the latter, he stops whatever he is doing to listen and to watch her. When they go to bed, she says “have a good night, my lord” and turns her back to him. She has nightmares, he often can’t sleep, they don’t mention any of it in the morrow.

One morning, she reaches for her cup of lavender tea and announces she’s going to the local market with Lady Margaery.

“Fine,” he nods. He seeks, and finds, in his pocket, a little bag with enough golden dragons to sustain a small family of peasants for a whole month. “Here, buy yourself some new clothes.”

She accepts it, but looks at him warily. “I like my clothes.”

“You’re a high-born lady, a Stark of Winterfell,” Tyrion mutters. “You shouldn’t be wearing dresses fit for a handmaid.” Damn, with that hair, people can barely _recognize_ her.

The right corner of her lips raises in a tiny, mysterious smile. “Are you ashamed of me, Lord Tyrion?”

He almost chokes on his tea. “I beg your pardon?”

“Are you ashamed of your wife wearing simple dresses at court?” She explains, as if he were a child.

“Lady Sansa,” he says. “The mere idea that _I_ am the one, between the two of us, who’s got any reason to be ashamed before the court is absolutely ludicrous, but I’m afraid you’re well aware of that fact.”

She seems to truly weigh his words, and he feels strangely thankful for the honesty. “Thank you, my lord,” she says, at last.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

Tyrion doesn’t see his wife at the midday meal. She’s there when he retires at night, though. Not still completely off the habit of being alone, he doesn’t knock on the closed door of the bedroom, coming across his wife, only in her bodice and small-clothes, surrounded by dressmakers reaping measures of her waist, bosom, the length of her arms.

The women are able to react before he does, their faces shifting between shame and surprise, but Sansa is quicker than all of them, casually saying as she catches his glance, “oh, it’s fine. It’s just my husband.”

Tyrion supposes the whole court knows about the marital state of their bed, and they mock him for it now just as they did before; but as the women finish the work on his wife, he looks away. When they leave, he still has his back turned to Sansa. He doesn’t know why.

“You can turn around now, my lord,” she says, and so he does. She’s dressed in her night-clothes. Her hair is still dark, but under the light of the candles, the strands catch the fire in golden and copper highlights. He narrows his eyes and she smiles. “Lady Margaery gave me a gift, a cleanser to bring the color back and wash the black off.”

“Hm,” he nods. He’s not quite sure how to feel about the color of her hair. He tries not to think about it too much. But she’s nurturing it back to health, anointing each long strand with coconut oil at night, cutting out the dry tips. “So, how was the market?”

“Oh, it was fine,” she says, walking toward the flagon of wine and pouring out one cup to him. “I’ve bought new silks. Ink. New dresses, as you suggested,” she sits on the border of the bed, two full bags by her side. “They just needed some adjustments. They were too tight in some places and too loose in others,” she shrugs.

He tries not to think about _that_ , too. “I see,” he murmurs, and, mostly to distract himself from the obvious bigger and smaller parts of his wife’s body, pokes at one of the bags. “What is the ink for? I thought you were trying to wash it _off_.”

Sansa giggles. “It’s not for my hair,” she says. “I miss painting.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” he mutters, feeling stupid, finding some blank canvases in the other bag. “I miss painting as well.” He hasn’t done it in ages.

Sansa looks at him with those vivid, wintery eyes of hers, that on occasion can let something slip from out of her. It is unsettling. “Do you like it? Painting?”

“I used to,” he shrugs. “Not quite _painting_ , though. I like drawing. You know, with charcoal. I could never get the colors right.” He gives her a smirk. “All that I drew looked like a draft, anyway. I’m not sure I’ve ever _finished_ anything.”

She takes the silks and threads, all in dark, somber tones, lets them slip through her fingers. Her hands are so, so pretty. “I’m the opposite. Sometimes I feel that I can’t _see_ the lines when I paint. I _only see_ color… And how it shifts in the light. ” Tyrion weighs her words in silence, wondering what do they say about her, about him, what does it mean. She looks at him again, and suddenly, blushes. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” He says, barely above a whisper.

She is still looking at him, right in his eyes. Her words, messy. “I don’t know. For speaking.”

Tyrion chuckles. He feels sorry for her. He wants to ask - _what happened to you_ \- but he already knows the answer; what happened to her has been happening for years. He was there when it begun.

It makes him remember, and memory makes him take a step back with a very familiar guilt. He nods and lets his head fall and waddles away from the bed, away from her. Sansa has always preferred to be left alone, and he knows better this time than to bother her; he knows better than to try at all. “Never apologize for speaking your mind, my lady,” he says, trying to decipher that helpless look in his wife’s eyes. _Or your heart_ , he thinks, does not say it. “It’s all we have left of ourselves, _for_ ourselves.” They often can’t own their futures, their bodies, their dreams. They both are living proof of that. But they have their mind to call their own. He takes the cup of wine she’s filled for him and starts to walk to the bathroom, longing for a hot bath and for the stupor of alcohol.

But before he enters, he can hear her quiet chuckle and her voice saying “yes, my lord, you would be the one to know.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

“What is troubling you so?”

He can’t quite see her. She’s hidden by the canvas, wearing one of the old, ugly gowns that she brought from the Eyrie. He _can_ see her fingers, though, stained with yellow and green ink, wrapping around a brush.

Tyrion lets his head fall back on the chair. He had tried to work and gave up. He is trying to read, now, but he has been staring at the same page for what feels like an hour.

“Aegon Targaryen,” he answers. Sansa kind of chuckles behind the canvas. “The Martells. The Tyrells. Fucking Tyrells, they are _everywhere_.” He sighs, deeply. “Like a plague.” He drinks deep, stares at the bottom of the cup, decides to fill it again. “I’m sorry, I know you’re fond of Lady Margaery, but I...” He shakes his head. “Well. I am not.”

“It’s no matter; she’s not particularly fond of you, either,” Sansa says.

He’s left with no choice but to laugh. There’s some implicit, reluctant truce between him and Margaery now, for Sansa’s sake, but it doesn’t make anyone in her family easier to handle in Council or at court. He gave up the punishment that bitch of her grandmother _deserved_ , in the name of Daenerys’ peace, but that doesn’t mean he has forgotten the debt. Lannisters never do.

Sansa offers him an apologetic smile; looks at the canvas; dives the brush in red ink, and then yellow, blending the colors. “I have a question.”

“Please,” he says with a vague wave of his hand, drinks again.

Sansa falls back on her seat, retreating a couple of inches, and tilts her head as she examines the canvas again. “Why don’t we move to Casterly Rock?”

Tyrion looks at her direction with intention for the first time. “Pardon me?”

“It’s your birth-right, isn’t it?” She bends her body forward once more. The movements of her hand as she strokes the canvas _look_ light; as a mother’s caress. She paints slowly: sometimes, she spends a very long time looking at it just to add one single, small detail. Tyrion is trying to read, that’s true, but he can see her moving with the corner of his eye. And she is far more interesting, anyway.

“Well, y-yes,” Tyrion _stumbles_ at the words.

“I know Daenerys hasn’t chosen her Hand yet,” Sansa says, testing the colors and deciding for a dark shade of blue. She switches the brush for a bigger one. “And that she’s probably going to choose you, but you _fought_ for Casterly Rock. It is _yours._ You wouldn’t fight for it, if you didn’t want it.” She shrugs. “And you said you would take me there, anyway. To show me the Hall of Heroes.”

He feels this old pain under his breastbone. An aching thing. “I thought you had forgotten about that,” he says, sharply and just suggestively sour. He _hasn’t_ forgotten her empty eyes at the carriage, and his answer to her icy courtesies. _Only a Lannister can love the Rock._ Oh, yes. The day she left him behind.

“Well,” Sansa murmurs, casually. She doesn’t look sorry, but she’s not bitter about it. Her face is hard, but her eyes are not. “I haven’t. If you take me, you’ll be free from those who pain your nights, and you’ll be paying your debt to me. I thought you Lannisters were all about paying debts,” she finishes. He can’t read her tone. He just can’t.

“How do you _know_ those things?” He inquires. It’s a question for himself, and not only for her; she chuckles again, and it’s kind of ironic, kind of a smirk, like him, most of the time.

“I’m at court as much as you are, my lord.”

She’s not the same girl who married him, four years ago; he had noticed. He is not the same man, either, but with that phrase, a new Sansa unveils before him, like scales falling off his eyes. Tyrion has to make a pause, here. “Was that the reason why you chose to stay with me?”

Because they never spoke of it, or of the past. And sometimes, he wants to know. Sometimes, most time, he doesn’t.

Sansa stops her work for the first time, and moves her seat so she can look at him, truly, without barriers. He looks at her across the room, a lady with ink in her fingers, her dark hair braided, and eyes that caught the fire, making themselves blue-and-green, like the Sunset Sea during springtime. “I chose you because I am safer with you than with anyone else,” she states. There’s no warmth or bite in it. It’s just a fact. “But I’m not going to lie to you, my lord. I hate this city, and if I can’t go home, I’d like to, at least, leave this place.”

He snorts a laughter. “Who doesn’t hate this city?” Then he bites his lower lip, looking again at the wine in his cup, swirling it to watch the liquid swirl as well. “But to know your feelings about it… Well, it _matters_ , a lot,” he says, softly. “So thank you, my lady.”

She looks at him and for a moment, it’s like her eyes are on fire, like she is about to burn him with some foreign flame.

But the moment passes, and she nods.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

“Stay quiet,” Sansa asks, forgetting herself for a second.

Her husband is reading before the hearth. It became such a familiar, repetitive sight that she was _sure_ he’d be easier to paint. Like habit and routine over the past month and a half could draw him behind her eyelids and in the memory of her muscles and in the nerve endings of her fingers until he became like a second nature to her, something she wears everyday, like clothes. But looking at the forms she was able to convey up until now - it is just not that simple.

He changes so much with every angle. And he moves a lot, shifts his support from the right arm to the left, bends his neck backwards when it’s sore. She needs him to be still.

That’s what he doesn’t do, now. Instead he looks at her and curls one of his eyebrows. “I’m quiet,” he says, clearly confused.

“I mean keep _still_ ,” she sighs. “Stare at the fire.”

“I’m reading. Why would-” and then realization hits him. “- _are you painting me?_ ” Sansa gets up, walks toward him, and moves the candle by his side, on the console, slightly to the left. She comes back to her seat. That’s better. “My lady?”

She makes an honest effort to keep her eyes from rolling. It’s unladylike, and Petyr did it a lot, and now she needs to unlearn him. “I’m tired of painting sunsets,” she argues. “I’m just asking for you to ignore me, which you already do anyway whether I ask or not. And we both know you’re not truly reading that book.”

He laughs, but at last, closes his book and looks at the hearth. “I don’t ignore you,” he says, and it’s actually tender, his voice.

“Yes, you do.” She looks at him. She _sees_ him, and dives the brush into the yellow ink, then the white one. She gives a stroke in the hair falling in front of his eyes. Looking from his angle, she can only see half of his face, on profile, the half free of scars. The half with the black eye, her favorite. She needed five different colors to get _that_ black right.

“I don’t, not on purpose. I try to leave you alone.”

“That’s the same thing,” Sansa says, somewhat amused. She doesn’t resent him for keeping his distance. But she can’t pretend she likes it, either. She doesn’t; it doesn’t terribly hurt her, his reticence, it just _bothers_ her, like a bug you can’t get rid off.

“It isn’t,” he insists. She can see he is trying to speak without moving too much, which is sweet. “I thought- I thought you’d like it better that way.”

“I can’t blame you for thinking that,” she needs _orange_ , that’s what she needs (because that’s how the glow of the fire settles on his hair, and in his eye), but a shade of orange that is closer to that bright quality of the yellow and the strong quality of the red and she doesn’t know how to make this imaginary color come to life.

“But I’m always aware of you,” he says, his eyes still on the hearth. It sounds very, very much like a confession. Sansa shivers, even though she’s not cold. He finally looks down, to his own hands, resting on his lap, on the cover of the closed book. His finger fidget. He’s clearly not comfortable with the idea of being painted. Or maybe, just _studied_ , stared at, observed. “So it’s not the same thing.”

She takes her eyes away from the canvas and looks at him.

Not searching for the colors or the lights or the forms.

Just looks at him, and he moves his head toward her and sustains the look, and for some reason, Sansa blushes. “Eyes on the hearth,” she mutters.

He gives a quiet chuckle, a nervous sound. “I don’t know how to do this.”

She laughs, too. “It consists in _keeping still_ , my lord. It’s not that hard.” She paints little points of light in his eye. On his cheekbone, where the glow meets his face. At the collar of his tunic. “And I don’t like it better that way, just to make clear. When you leave me alone.”

He smiles. It’s small and shy and brief, but it is enough to deepen the wrinkles around his eye. It lingers in him, even when his mouth is not smiling anymore. Sansa doesn’t know how to paint it. She just thinks it’s beautiful. “All right,” he says.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

“Walk with me,” he invites her, one day.

It is the middle of the afternoon. They don’t normally see each other much during the day; he’s always in some meeting with the Queen, or her Council. Sansa accepts the invitation.

The Red Keep has many secret gardens, nurtured to survive even in extreme circumstances. This is the fourth year of winter and Sansa is of the North: she’s brought her cloak with her, gray and white on her shoulders; her gloves, too, gray. The garden Tyrion chose is hidden from view, but open to the sky; all the light that nurtures it comes from one single huge hole at the dome. It makes Sansa think that maybe he’s not trying to exhibit her as his prize to his enemies, maybe she’s not needed in some plot, in some game, maybe he just wants to walk with her. She sits on a wood bench among winter flowers, their little blue petals open, and Tyrion sits by her side - his arm touches hers. It had snowed that morning - sometimes it does, in King’s Landing - and it’s cold enough now that the snow still covers the bushes, the trees, the flowers, the ground.

Sansa closes her eyes, and when Tyrion speaks, she listens to his low, deep voice like this. In the darkness. “I thought you’d like this one,” he says.

She smiles, bending her head backward to drink in the white, cold light of the sun from above. The heat hits her face like a material, solid thing. She exhales, and the air is a white smoke in front of her face. “It’s a little like home,” she murmurs. “What brings us here?”

“Just boredom,” he shrugs.

“I thought you were working,” she says.

“I _was_ working,” he confirms, “believe me, I have many things to do. And yet… I was terribly bored.”

“So you’re _escaping_ ,” she clarifies.

“One could phrase it like that, sure.”

Sansa chuckles, opens her eyes, looks at him. He’s shivering with the cold. He’s dressed for cold weather, sure, a heavy cloak on his shoulders; but his hands are bare. “Where are your gloves?”

He is shrinking, coiling into himself to keep the cold outside, hiding his hands inside his cloak as much as possible. “I forgot them,” he says. “I don’t normally come out.”

Sansa takes his hands. She cups her own hands around his, forcing his palms up, and brings them close to her mouth, then closer, before she slowly blows on them, drowning his hands in the warm air of her breath. “You silly southerner,” she mutters.

And his eyes are wide with fear and awe and gentleness. Sansa thinks to herself that she needs to remember this, needs to remember how he looks now, so she can finish the painting later. She needs to register this- feeling. The way he seems younger for it. “What are you looking at?” He whispers.

“I’m looking at you,” she says, and then, kisses him.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

At night, Sansa turns around to watch her husband sleeping.

In the almost complete absence of light, she feels him as shapeless energy. A body irradiating warm. It’s a cold night (winter nights always are.)

Sansa remembers his face after she kissed him. She wonders how it would be to sleep inside his arms. Would she feel safe or threatened? Would she feel comforted? Or just suffocated, invaded?

She turns around again, doesn’t fall asleep.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

She’s closer, these days. She didn’t kiss him again, and he’s very sorry for himself for it but she’s closer: she holds his hand under the table during dinners at court, speaking in easy pleasantries and flattering all the right people. He’s in awe of her, and he thinks it shows.

Truth be told, both of them could be useful, here. They could build something good for Daenerys, for the Kingdoms, they could rise above it. But Sansa’s fingers are cold and nervous, tangled in his. Her face never lets the fear spill out, but he can see it, anyway, in the way her laughter is different here than it is when they are alone, and he wonders, stupid fool that he is, if they could build something good for themselves elsewhere.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

She’s not painting tonight, but he feels her eyes on him all the same, once in a while.

It is hard to focus on his book like this, but he is reading a poem, and the line comes out of the page like a slap on his face. He snorts a short laughter, puts the tome down, lets the words wash over.

“A comedy?” Sansa asks, turning the page of her own book. But he is not _amused._ If anything, he is sorry.

Tyrion smiles to himself. “Poetry. From Dorne.”

“I didn’t know you liked poetry,” she says without lifting her eyes. _She_ likes poetry, he knows. He looks at her in silence. She has a beautiful _mouth_ , he notices. He remembers that it was softer than he’d imagined, and warmer, too; he had thought she would feel cold. Her hair is starting to look copper again, in a certain light, if a man had eyes charitable enough. Finally, under the silence, she raises her eyes to him, just to find him already looking at her. She blushes, beautifully. “Share with me.”

Tyrion ponders that for a moment, her eyes like his host, he, the unwilling guest - _a prisoner_ , he says to himself, _that's the name you’re looking for._ He can’t take his eyes off of hers.

“ _I am a man with a heart that offends, with its lonely and greedy demands_ ,” at last, he quotes.

(Across from him on the sofa, Sansa shivers, quietly, unnoticeable.)

She doesn’t say anything.

It occurs to Tyrion, then - “Did you finish your painting?”

She looks away - freeing him. “Not yet. There’s a color in you…” She frowns her brow. “I can’t quite find it.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

Sansa is not one to pry. Or maybe she is; was; is trying not to be. One night, she is waiting for him, and he doesn’t come back. Their food is waiting over the table. Sansa looks at the unfinished painting of her husband across the room. _I need gold_ , she realizes; it’s not yellow, or orange, she needs burning gold, something tempered in fire. She imagines herself melting down the whole profit of the mines of Casterly Rock just to make her husband justice in a painting, and smiles to herself.

She thinks about going to the contiguous room, their bedchamber; instead, she finds herself attracted by the book of dornish poetry he was reading, a couple of nights before. _I am a man with a heart that offends, with its lonely and greedy demands_. It’s resting over his table in the corner, and she walks toward it, sitting in the comfortable, low chair where he spends most of his nights, writing or reading something.

His table is a mess. There are two or three books, many letters, a flagon of wine, his cup, ink, a quill, wax (for the letters, she supposes), charcoal, two candles. Beneath it all she sees the tip of a parchment that looks like a drawing. She carefully gathers it, only to find herself, painted in charcoal patterns: it is her, Sansa knows, because her face is perfectly pictured, at the level of the smallest detail. Everything else is vague, rough black lines around her. _A draft_ , as he’d said. In his eyes, she stands behind a canvas, her brush in the air, her hair braided, her face concentrated - a small wrinkle between her eyebrows, the subtle tilt of her head. Sansa searches among the books. She finds another one. And another one. And yet another, each one the same, everything blurred but for her face: her face lifted up to the sky, eyes closed, in a garden made of snow. Her arms embracing the high-harp, her fingers delicately tugging the chords. A dinner table with dozens of people present and herself, proudly sitting in the middle - she could even recognize _him_ , a twisted and small and foggy thing by her side. _I’m not sure I’ve ever finished anything_ , he’d said.

Sansa touches her own face in the parchment, smearing her fingers in lead.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been staring at those drawings when she listens to her husband coming in, and her body takes too long to react to the sound. He finds her behind his table, he looks at her hands and he is faster than she is.

His first reaction is exactly what she expected - he is angry. “What are you _doing_ -” he says between gritted teeth, waddling furiously to her.

“I’m sorry, I was looking for a book and -” Sansa mumbles as he approaches her and harshly takes the parchments out of her hands. “-no, don’t do that,” she almost _orders_ , out of instinct. She lets go of the parchments, her open hands suddenly too empty. “You’ll rip them out.”

Tyrion, standing by her side, looks at her. Then it comes, the shock, the surprise.

Whatever he sees in her face softens his tone. Just a bit. “There’s nothing of your concern here,” he mutters, and Sansa smiles to herself.

 _Oh, gods,_ she thinks. “Yes, there is. I’m in every one of them, so they very much concern me,” she murmurs. He resigns to silence, an angry and resented and humilated silence, and Sansa delicately takes one of the parchments from his hands, tugging until he lets it go. “You spent quite some time watching me,” she says, softly. “You made me look… beautiful.”

He rolls his eyes. “You _are_ beautiful. Actually, I-”

But Sansa chuckles and silences him with a kiss, and this time- this time, she caught him by surprise, that much is true, but the surprise is not enough to keep him from _reacting_ , and he treads his fingers in her hair and forces her mouth open, as if he had been only _waiting_ and she thinks _yes, yes._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

That night, when they go to bed, Sansa doesn’t turn her back on him. Instead, she slides closer to him, lets her head rest on his shoulder. In the dark, in the silence, she feels the press of his lips on the crown of her hair.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

They need to find Aegon a bride, and after that, Daenerys plans to go North and see that the Usurper Stannis Baratheon kneel to her. The reconstruction of the Tower of the Hand is almost done.

“You need to find yourself a Hand,” Tyrion says to her. “If you have plans to leave.”

The Queen’s chambers look at Blackwater Bay, about to freeze, any day now. Tyrion remembers wildfire and the sharpness of death on his face, on his nose.

He looks away, eyes finding the bottom of his cup, and thinks of other things, practical things, like how they are going to harbor anything at all if the sea becomes a giant block of ice. At least they have dragons. Fire-breathing, blessed creatures.

Daenerys raises one eyebrow. “Do you have any ideas?”

Tyrion smirks. “Jorah Mormont. Doran Martell.”

“And you, my lord?” Daenerys approaches him, carefully. Tyrion watches her. She’s a wonderful woman, the Queen. She’ll need every help she can get. “What am I to do with you?”

“Our deal was clear,” Tyrion says, looking into her eyes as his finger lazily runs over the border of his cup. “Recognize me as Lord of Casterly Rock, and the West shall be yours.”

“You _are_ the Lord of Casterly Rock,” Daenerys says. “And the West is mine.”

Tyrion decides to wait, for a change.

“I was wondering if you wouldn’t stay in my Council,” she says. “Rhaegal likes you.”

Tyrion laughs. “You can’t make a job out of being your children’s pet, Your Grace,” he answers.

Daenerys smiles, too. The bells in her hair clink when she turns around, to look at the window. “Can’t I?” And then, eyes on him again, “I need your advice. You’ve been loyal, and you’ve earned the right to be my Hand as much as you deserve Casterly Rock.”

“As your friend,” he says, “I advise you against it. Nobody in your Council likes me.”

“They’ll get used to you,” she shrugs. “I did.”

“Not just them, but the people of King’s Landing still think me a monster.”

“They’re wrong,” Daenerys says, lovingly stubborn. “We’ll prove them wrong.”

 _Are they_ , he wonders.

“Whoever holds the West, holds the mines,” Tyrion argues. “You can’t rule without gold. I assure you, Your Grace, now more than ever you’ll need me there.”

“I thought you _wanted_ to stay,” Daenerys murmurs.

Tyrion stares at his own cup.

“Think about this,” she says, placing a hand over his. “Just… think about it.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

When he retires, he finds no one in the first room of his chambers. The fire burns in the hearth but the loveseat, the chairs, they’re all empty. The door to the bedroom is open, though.

Tyrion walks in.

He finds his wife there, sitting in a chair by the side of their bed, reading a book - he recognizes the cover, the dornish poetry tome he’d been reading last week. She is wearing a thick robe - it’s a cold night, and the fire in the hearth is burning low but the candles are all lit, everywhere. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, not braided, as it usually is. It looks brown now. Not black, not yet auburn. “My lord,” she greets him with a smile.

“My lady,” he nods to her. Looking around, he can see a small table - they never use it, because he always uses his cabinet during the day or the next room at night - and a leather notebook resting atop it. He frowns. “Is that new?”

“I bought for you,” Sansa says. “Consider it a gift.”

He looks at her. Her legs are displicently placed over the leg of the chair, the hem of the robe sliding up her thighs. Her eyes catch every flame in the room. “A gift?” Tyrion murmurs, warily.

“If,” Sansa says, sitting straight in the chair. “You’ll draw me.”

Tyrion laughs. “Not a gift, then.” He undoes the strip of leather embracing the notebook and opens it. It’s big enough, full of blank pages, the parchment ready, waiting for an artist to place their art, a poet to write down their words, an penitent man to pull out their confession. Depending on how one looked at it, it was possible to do all at once, in one single page.

Sansa’s smile is sly. “I thought that if you can draw me so well while you’re secretly spying on me-”

“I was not spying,” Tyrion points a finger at her, amused. “I was just studying you. You did the same with me, and I was, too, unwilling.”

“Fair is fair,” she nods slowly. “So?”

Tyrion weighs the notebook in his hands. “Very well,” he takes the place behind the table, occupying the bench. She was thoughtful enough to place the charcoal sticks, some thin and long, some thick and rough. “How would you like to be drawn, my lady?”

She gets up, tugs at the tie around her waist until it gives in. The robe slowly parts away; through the gape, Tyrion only sees skin. Then, she slides it off her arms and lets it fall to the ground. And there’s nothing but _her_ underneath it, just her body, naked as we all came into the world.

He has to remind himself, to force himself, to look at her _face_. He does. After a while. She’s nervous, opening and closing her fingers.

Tyrion gets up. He walks toward her and takes her hand, guiding her to the bed. She’s even more nervous when he does so, but he signs for her to, wordlessly, lie down, as close as possible to the edge of the mattress. He takes two or three cushions, smoothing them under her head and arm. He takes three steps back; looks closely; and then approaches the bed again, saying, softly, “on your back” - she does, “now turn just a little to your right - yes,” he nods, and he takes one of her arms, splays it over her belly, and the other under her head, and he raises her left knee just a bit, just _so_ , and places her chin just _here_ and there she is. It’s perfect. “Fine?” He asks. She never took her eyes, scared and blue, off of his face as he positioned her. She only nods, now.

Tyrion takes his place on the bench behind the table, opens the first page of the notebook and at first, he just takes a look.

If he were a painter, Tyrion would know _color_.

He’d know the way her eyes, the bluest eyes he’s ever seen, caught fire under the quivering candleglow; he’d know the pink staining her cheeks, her neck, all the way down to her chest; he’d know the rusty tone of her strands, and the creamy paleness of her skin, and her dusky nipples, and the definitely auburn triangle of hair between her legs.

He isn’t, though. As it is, all he can see is form.

Every other time he’s drawn her, he always had to start with the draft of the environment around her. He could never abstract her out of life again. Now, Sansa only existed in place and time, so he wouldn’t mistake her for his own dreams, or someone else that she could be but isn’t. A real person, his wife. He clung to the details of the moments he stole from her. He needed it. It felt grounding.

But right now, in this very moment, she is so _undoubtedly_ real. There’s no reason anymore to ground himself in reality because she is the reality, everything else gravitating around her. He gives himself this little indulgence: of starting with her. He starts with her body. The outline of her hips, legs, chest. There is nothing out of proportion, nothing stunted, too small or too big, nothing ugly in her. And yet he can’t feel the tart of envy under his tongue. He is absorbed into his work: in the perfectly soft line of her long legs and arms, in the swell of her hips. Her delicate, dainty fingers just above her belly-button, the smooth, sparse hair trailing down from it, like an arrow. He doesn't hurry, she doesn't seem to mind that he is taking his time, and the time flies. He wishes he could truly capture all of her, the twitch of her fingers or the way her chest rises and falls with each breath or the way she bites her lip once in a while. But he goes on, and on, trying to render everything that is form. The firmness of her full breasts, covered by freckles, her nipples like hard peaks into the air. He imagines himself mouthing one of them and his cock, already very much hard, painfully twitches inside his trousers. “Are you cold?” He asks, mindlessly. He looks at her face for the first time since he started.

Her eyes are liquid sapphires. She doesn’t look scared anymore. She’s guarded, but not shy. “No,” she says, and her voice is thick with desire. It wholly changes her face. He has no idea how he’s going to draw it.

He swallows down, his mouth dry, trying not to _groan_. “What is it?” He murmurs, trying to find the best way to carry on the fragility in the fingers of her hands.

She chuckles under her breath. “It’s very interesting to watch you draw.” He smiles, looks up, to her, looks down at the parchment again. There are details missing - particularly in her fingers, both from her hands and her feet - but he decides to move on to her face. This part he’s relatively used to draw. But the more he glances at her, the more he convinces himself that this Sansa, laid bare before him, is not the same Sansa he steals moments from. There’s something burning, alive, coming from her. He draws the familiar, first - the sharpness of her cheekbones, her nose, her chin. Her hair, the way it embraces her face, falls against the cushions. And he stops there. He looks into her eyes, to her eyebrows, to the small, infinitesimal parts of her face. Whatever it is in her that is changed, it must be some kind of spiritual thing. Formless, bodiless. He bites the inside of his cheek. “Now you,” she says.

He spares her a wary smile, a glance. “I don’t know if I can draw your face right.”

“You’ve done it before,” she says, frowning one perfect eyebrow. Tyrion feels himself ache again. “And masterfully so.”

“Thank you; but…” He presses his lips against one another. “I don’t know.” It is _different_ to examine someone and to draw them out of memory. Memory is flawed, imperfect, unworthy of trust. There is no mistaking the way she was looking at him, now.

“Come take a closer look,” she offers.

Tyrion lets that groan escape. “I’d rather not,” he murmurs, his throat working the words hoarsely.

She opens the hand over her belly. “Why not?”

“Because I’d like to _finish_ this,” he explains, plainly. Damn; he never finishes anything.

There’s an edge to her voice, a quiet trembling of anticipation when she says, “you can finish later. Neither me nor the drawing are going anywhere.”

Tyrion thinks about that, nods, at last, and cleans the lead from his hands with a wet cloth. Then, he blows off some candles along his way to the bed, leaving only two of them alight. He climbs on his side of the mattress and Sansa has to turn around to face him. A part of him, the part that is still sitting on the bench behind the table, trying to work her through, laments the fact that she’s out of her pose. The other part of him has forgotten that there was, once, a drawing, to begin with. He hides beneath the blankets, but Sansa gently pulls the quilt down with shaky, unsure hands. He holds her wrist.

“I’m not afraid,” she whispers, “Tyrion, I’m not.”

He looks at her face. At her _eyes_ , and thinks, _oh, I’ve got it, I’ve got you,_ but then she is slowly, hesitantly, leaning down on him, her hands seeking for the fastening of his clothes as her mouth presses softly against his. His hand wraps around her hip, he feels a gasp against his tongue, and that is when he loses it again.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
…

Later, much later, Sansa is catching her breath, laying down among the sheets, and her eyes are closed, so he can study her face. Completion makes Sansa _thaw._ She is soft and pliant with exhausted satisfaction. Her hair is a mess. He’s never seen her look so beautiful before, and he fights the urge to hold her, to bring her into his arms and against his chest.

There’s a half-smile on her lips. It makes Tyrion smile, too. “I’m going to say no to the Queen,” he says.

Sansa opens her eyes. Turns around, laying down on her belly instead, and clutches a blanket, bringing it to rest under her cheek, covering her arm as she rests her head against it. “Pardon me?”

He smirks. Always a lady, even naked, post-orgasmic in her own bed. “The Queen asked me to be her Hand,” he says. “And I’m going to say no, so we can move to the West.”

The emotion in her eyes, just a flash of it, is enough to dismantle him completely. He had doubts. He hasn’t, anymore. “Are you sure?”

“I am sure,” he murmurs.

She bites her lip, and then half-smiles. “All right, then,” she whispers.

He wants to kiss her, he wants to rest between her breasts, he wants to fuck her again; instead, he tries to reach for her hand, and kiss the back of her fingers. She doesn’t look bothered by it. “All right?”

She nods. “All right.” Her smile is full and bright, now, and Tyrion is flooded, for the first time, with the very peculiar, specific happiness of being the reason for one of Sansa Stark’s smiles. A whole new universe unravels from it. Of hope, and possibility, and who knows. He might even love her, eventually, when they're out of this place. 

**Author's Note:**

> the poem and the title are both from "john my beloved," by sufjan stevens. 
> 
> lemme know what you think :)


End file.
